UK considers monitoring social media due to riots

Yesterday, the UK Prime Minster David Cameron told the Parliament he is working with the industry and security services to ascertain whether or not it would be right to prevent the current London rioters from accessing social network websites like Twitter and Facebook.

The UK Prime Minister said:

"We [the government] are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."

It is understandable that the Prime Minister tries to do all he can to tackle the current dangerous situation of disorder and violence, also because we see that in more and more countries rioters use social network sites to plan and start riots. However, from a trias-politica point-of-view, a judge and not the government or private companies should decided whether a website should be blocked.

Previously, we mentioned the UK government cancelled a plan to order blocking of illegal file sharing sites. This plan consisted of a system whereby the government, so not a judge, maintained a list of sites that all ISPs in the country would have to block. This would however be considered censorship and, besides that, unpractical, so the plan was not implemented. We will have to wait and see what happens in the near future with respect to the possible plan of blocking social network sites.

Reference: ISPreview